Tuesday, March 05, 2013

There are some games you have no business winning.Not 19 minutes into the game you are down
0-3, your opponent having scored at even-strength, on a power play, and on a
shorthanded penalty shot.And, your
opponent is 9-0-0 when scoring first, 5-0-0 when leading after one period.They had allowed a total of only 26 goals in
the second and third periods of their 19 games to date.You have a blogger calling up images of a 10-2 pasting you put on this team five years ago being thrown back in your
face.

Yes, it would be fair to say you had no business winning that game.But the Washington Capitals scored two goals
in the second period, kept the pressure up in the third, and finally cracked
the Boston Bruins with a goal late in the third period to tie the game.Getting that extra-time point would have been
at the least a moral victory.But the
Caps came all the way back when Eric Fehr scored at 37 seconds of the overtime
to give the Caps what is easily their best win of the year, 4-3 over the
Bruins.

The Bruins scored first when Brad Marchand was hooked by Alex Ovechkin
after he took off on a breakaway with the Caps on a power play.Marchand was awarded a penalty shot and
showed patience as he skated in deliberately and picked goalie Braden
Holtby’s five hole for the goal.

Zdeno Chara added a goal a little more than ten minutes later when his
initial shot hit David Krejci right in the “lower-body injury” area.The puck dropped to Krejci’s feet where it
then pinballed among a clot of players in front of Holtby.Chara snuck – if one who is 6’9”, 260 can be
said to “sneak” – around the bodies and stuffed the puck under Holtby’s pad.

Dougie Hamilton, who came into the game with two goals on 45 shots so
far this season (4.4 percent) scored with just 90 seconds left in the period in
what might have been a dagger goal, a fluttering shot that Holtby missed with
his blocker over his right pad.

But that would be it for Boston.The Caps
got one back early in the second when Chara could not get the puck out of the
Bruin zone.Steve Oleksy, playing in his
first NHL game, kept the puck in at the point and fired on goal. Alex Ovechkin
sticked the puck down and slid it to a wide open Mike Ribeiro to goalie Tuukka
Rask’s right.Ribeiro did not miss, and
the Caps had life.For Oleksy, the
assist was his first NHL point.

The Caps inched closer by doing something they have had some success
with this season.Nicklas Backstrom won
a faceoff from Chris Kelly by kicking the puck back toward the top of the
circle.Eric Fehr beat Brad Marchand to
the puck and slid it back to Tomas Kundratek.Marchand tried to get his stick in front of the shot coming from
Kundratek and might have gotten a sliver of the puck as it came off Kundratek’s
stick.Whether he did or did not, the
shot had the look of a Mariano Rivera cut fastball.The fluttering puck looked as if it actually
curved around Rask’s glove as it sailed up into the near corner of the net to
get the Caps within one.

That set the stage for an odd play that would foretell the game’s end.Eric Fehr took a pass in stride from Nicklas
Backstrom and skated down the right side through the neutral zone.As he approached the Boston blue line he cut
to the middle with Wojtek Wolski on his left.Fehr drew four Bruins to him, surrounding him as if in a box.Rather that try to split the two defensemen in
front of him, Fehr chipped the puck off to Wolski.Dougie Hamilton appear to get a piece of it
with his right leg, but not enough to keep it from getting to Wolski’s
stick.Wolski wasted no time in sending
the puck the rest of the way on a backhand that seemed to catch Rask
flatfooted.The puck settled into the
back of the net with 6:05 left, and the game was tied.

That is how regulation ended, but overtime did not last long.It was Backstrom starting things again.He took a feed from Eric Fehr as the two were
exiting the Caps zone.Backstrom edged
over to his left ever so slightly, and Fehr filled the middle.As they approached the Boston line, Backstrom
fed the puck back to Fehr.Boston found
themselves out of position as the end-game of this play unfolded.Dougie Hamilton found himself too far outside
fronting Backstrom, especially since David Krejci had Backstrom more or less
covered.Dennis Seidenberg did not slide
over far enough to cover the opening Hamilton left, and Fehr jumped through the
gap.Seidenberg tried to hang onto Fehr
as he was splitting the defense, and as Fehr was falling to the ice in
Seidenberg’s grasp, he chipped the puck over Rask’s shoulder on the far side,
Rask cheating a bit to the near post.It
sent Caps fans home happy into what will be a snowy night, warm in the glow of
an unexpected, but well-earned win.

-- Who had Jay Beagle leading the Caps in shots on goal (tied with
Ovechkin with four)?

-- Speaking of Ovechkin, the Caps had 68 shot attempts, Ovechkin had 13
of them (four shots on goal, four shots blocked, and five missed shots).He had three hits, three takeaways, no
giveaways, and two blocked shots to go with an assist and a plus-1.Oh, he also had three penalties, one of them
leading to Boston’s shorthanded goal (Marchand’s penalty shot) and another
resulting in a Boston power play goal 15 seconds after Ovechkin got the gate. To that add the three times he found himself tumbling into the Bruin net, and he was a busy fellow.

-- Nicklas Backstrom quietly had three assists.This might have been his most “Backstromian”
game of the season.The assists
reflected keen vision and anticipation on his part, with some of the playmaking
aplomb Caps fans remember from the pre-concussion version of Backstrom.If he is raising his game a notch or two, the
Caps might have to be reckoned with after all.

-- Boston converted one of two power plays, but the “two” is the
important number here.Holding the
feisty Bruins to a pair of power plays was an essential ingredient in the
comeback.The Caps did not have to
expend a lot of effort killing penalties, and the absence of frequent penalty
kills allowed the Caps to keep some semblance of rhythm and flow.

-- Meanwhile, the Caps’ power play could do nothing against the Bruin
penalty kill.Boston is not number one
in the league in penalty killing for nothing.The Caps finished 0-for-4 and did not get so much as a shot on goal on
any of their first three power plays (they finished with two power play shots
on goal).

-- With his goal, Mike Ribeiro has had a hand in 25 of the Caps’ 59
goals scored through 21 games.

-- Steve Oleksy had quite the full score sheet.In addition to his first NHL point, he had
two shots on goal, three attempts, two hits, a takeaway, and three blocked
shots in just 10:05 of ice time.

-- Maybe it had something to do with stemming Boston’s momentum, maybe
not.But After John Erskine dropped the
mitts with Shawn Thornton after the Bruins’ second goal, The Caps outscored
Boston, 4-1.OK, that might be a
stretch.

-- The Caps fought the Bruins to a virtual draw in the Phenwick Phase
with 47 Fenwick events to 46 for Boston.And, the Caps took 28 offensive zone draws (winning 15) compared to
taking 18 defensive zone faceoffs (winning six).

-- Via Adam Vingan on Twitter, Aaron Volpatti said in the locker room at
the first intermission, “Boys, let's just focus on winning the second period.”Volpatti played one shift in the second
period, one shift in the third.Who says
actions speak louder than words?

-- Wolski’s goal might not have mattered, in fact might never have
happened but for some fine work by John Carlson five minutes before Wolski’s
heroics.Carlson was the last man back
on a 3-on-1 Boston break, and he managed to force a low-percentage pass across
the slot that handcuffed David Kreici enough that he could not get a comfortable swing
at the puck.Holtby covered up, and the
Caps still had a pulse.

-- And finally, tonight’s most valuable player might have been the one
laid up with illness.Troy Brouwer could
not answer the bell, for which Wolski might have been grateful.Wolski likely would have been in the press
box had Brouwer been able to go. As Alex Ovechkin might say... “sick!”

In the end, this was the sort of win the Caps thrilled fans with in the
2009-2010 season when they had the best record in the league when trailing
after two periods, and they outscored opponents in the third period of games by
44 goals (112 to 68).It would be a bit
much to expect this team to go to this well very often, but on this night they
showed the kind of resiliency a team has to have if they are to make an
impression in the post season.

WE INTERRUPT OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING

The Washington Capitals enter the 2016-2017 as one of 12 franchises in the NHL never to win a Stanley Cup. Of that group, only the St. Louis Blues (48 seasons), Buffalo Sabres (45 seasons), and Vancouver Canucks (45 seasons) have gone longer never having won a Cup than the Capitals (41 seasons). Six teams came into the league after the Capitals entered the league in 1974-1975 and have won Stanley Cups: Colorado Rockies/New Jersey Devils (1976-1977), Edmonton Oilers (1979-1980), Quebec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche (1979-1980), Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes (1979-1980), Tampa Bay Lightning (1992-1993), and the Anaheim Ducks (1993-1994).

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